This is football nowadays in some quarters of the world.
No wonder so many Irish people almost spit at the mere mention of ‘soccer’ or, especially, ‘the Premier League’ – or ‘Premiership’, as they’d call it.
Alexis Sanchez is a hell of a football player, nobody is going to deny that, but his biggest danger right now is being known as a modern day Arsenal player. The best thing any of those lads could do at present is to detach themselves from the name they have – soft, cowardly, son-in-laws.
But then their Chilean genius does things like he does on Wednesday night and you roll your eyes. In a brilliantly hard-fought 1-0 victory against the champions – the sort becoming too untypical of Wenger’s side – Sanchez ruined it all because he couldn’t just see out the last 75 seconds with a bit of honour.
Instead of just going on and winning the game and helping to see it out – instead of playing like a champion himself – Sanchez engages in a bit of playacting, presumably to try and get a fellow pro sent off.
He gets a ball chucked at him on 92:40.
Two seconds later, he’s alright.
Then… he’s not.
Listen, professional footballers – as a collective – are probably given too hard a time. They earn a lot of money so, for some reason, that makes people believe they’re there to be shot at.
Then you have incidents like this. Complete non-incidents, or at least they should be, and it does nothing but leave a sour taste in people’s mouths.
A player getting hit on the shoulder and actually pretending like he was hit on the face. Actually pretending like he was hurt. Actually trying to get an opposition player in trouble – when the game was all but won.
This is pathetic.
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